David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

Lady Lucy waited, eyes closed. When she peeped out of them she saw that her device had failed. The old lady’s eyes had closed too. Her breathing grew slow and regular. Just at the point when she might have been about to tell the whole story, Miss Augusta Harrison had fallen asleep.

Six Corinthian columns flanked by a couple of ancient statues gazed out across the lake. This must have been the centrepiece of the whole place, thought Powerscourt, wondering not for the first time about the strange mind of the man who had designed these fabulous gardens, a mind where the ancient myths of Greece and Rome and the poetry of Virgil seemed to have been more important than the eighteenth-century world he actually inhabited. Powerscourt thought he would have liked to meet the mind, if it could be summoned forth from the springs and grottoes it had left behind.

The pony trotted happily down to the water’s edge to munch the grass. Samuel Parker was fiddling with his bunch of keys.

‘Did Mr Harrison rest under these columns in the summer? It must be nice and cool then.’ Powerscourt could see the little temple, with its columns, dome and assorted statuary, in some Roman landscape of the Campagna, providing welcome relief from the sweltering sun. In England, he reflected prosaically, you could always shelter from the showers.

‘He used to, my lord,’ said Samuel Parker. ‘Then I think he got worried about being overlooked, so he used to go inside. This was one of his favourite places to do his writing.’

Parker had opened the great doors and was wrestling with the key to an iron grille that protected the sculpture inside. Facing the lake was a marble statue of Hercules, flanked by Diana, goddess of hunting, Ceres, goddess of nature and harvest, and – more ominously – Isis, mistress of the dark mysteries of the underworld. Powerscourt inspected them carefully, trying and failing to remember all seven labours of Hercules.

‘He’d leave the doors open, my lord,’ Samuel Parker was placing himself exactly where he remembered the table being, ‘and then he could look out at the lake when he wanted. Sometimes I’d wait for an hour or more just outside while he was writing away in here.’

‘Did Hercules mean anything special to him?’ asked Powerscourt, rubbing his hand over the surface of the statue to see if it might be hollow, if there might be some pressure from the hand which might open up a hidden chamber inside the marble.

‘Hercules was very stupid, my lord,’ said Samuel Parker, gazing out at the lake like his master.

‘Was he? Why do you say that?’ replied a puzzled Powerscourt.

‘He could never do anything right. None of them beginning with H, Hannibal, Helen, Hercules, ever had any brains at all.’

Powerscourt could see that Helen might have been all beauty and no brains, but Hannibal? Surely the wily Carthaginian had destroyed a couple of Roman armies?

‘Are you sure?’ Powerscourt was inspecting Diana’s flanks now, running his hand around the marble curves of her hips.

‘Sorry, my lord. They were horses, Hercules and the others. I wasn’t talking about the statues.’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘Tell me, Mr Parker, if your master wanted to hide some of his documents, do you think he could have left them in here?’

Samuel Parker scratched his head. He took some time to answer.

‘I suppose he could, my lord. But I have no idea at all where he might have hidden them. This would be a queer place to go hiding bits of paper.’

‘That’s just what might have appealed to him, the fact that nobody would expect it. But I have no more idea than you have of where it might be.’ Powerscourt was feeling his way round Ceres’ feet, in case some hidden spring might answer to his touch. The marble was cold to his fingers. It was smooth. But it had no message for him.

Lady Lucy sat very quietly in her chair. Far off in the gardens outside she could hear the sounds of grass being cut, the cheerful cries of the gardeners, the tolling of a distant bell.

She wondered if Miss Harrison, like her brother, talked in her sleep. Some of the years seemed to have fallen from her face, smoother now than when she was awake. Sometimes the old lady turned, as if she was dreaming. Her mouth fell open. Then she spoke.

‘Secret societies,’ she said in a firm voice. She stopped. ‘In Germany. Maybe here. Conspiracy at the bank.’

Lady Lucy wondered if she was repeating what her brother used to say as he sat in his chair by the fireside in the evenings when he was still alive.

Suddenly old Miss Harrison sat upright in her chair. She was still fast asleep.

‘That poor boy,’ she said. ‘Poor Karl. What a terrible scar.’

She dropped back in her chair. Lady Lucy hardly dared to move. She looked around the room, its tables cluttered with paintings and photographs of past Harrisons. She wondered if there was a likeness of Karl, hiding his shame somewhere in a dark corner. She couldn’t find one.

Then Miss Harrison woke up.

‘Always troubles in a bank, that’s what Father used to say, always troubles.’ She looked defiantly at Lady Lucy.

‘Of course, Miss Harrison, how right you are. There are always troubles in a bank.’

‘There’s just one last temple, my lord,’ said Samuel Parker, ‘but Old Mr Harrison didn’t go there. The path was very steep and he was worried he might fall.’

‘Then I think we’ll give it a miss today.’ Powerscourt’s mind was racing round the ancient myths and pagan gods that populated the lake, Aeneas travelling to the underworld to meet his dead father, Hercules cleaning the Augean stables, Isis presiding over her shadowy kingdom in the realms below.

To their right now was another lake, slightly lower than the one they had crossed, with a waterfall running into it.

‘No ancient temples down there,’ said Powerscourt, pointing down to the lower stretch of water.

‘No, there aren’t, my lord. I think we’ve got quite enough up here.’

‘Tell me, Mr Parker,’ said Powerscourt as they approached the Parker cottage once again, ‘where do you keep your keys? The ones you use to open all the temples.’

‘Why, my lord, they live on a big hook on the back of the front door. That’s where all the keys are, with a special ring for each one. You’d be surprised how many different bunches of keys you need to get around this place.’

‘And how easy would it be . . .’ Powerscourt turned for a last look at the circuit of the lake, two Pantheons, reflection and reality, sitting peacefully on their semicircle of grass. ‘How easy would it be for somebody to come and borrow them without your knowing?’

Samuel Parker stopped in his tracks. The pony made restive movements, anxious to return to her stall.

‘I’ve never thought about that.’ He paused to give the pony a reassuring stroke. ‘I suppose it would be easy, if the person knew I would be out most of the day. And Mabel’s going deaf, so she is, though she’d never admit it. Been going deaf for most of the past two years she has. Doctor says there’s nothing he can do.’

Powerscourt thanked Parker for their morning expedition. ‘It has been most useful, Mr Parker. I have to return again in a couple of days or so. Maybe I could borrow your keys and go for another inspection of the lake.’

He’s looking for something, Samuel Parker said to himself as Powerscourt strode off up the hill past the church. He thinks there may be some of Old Mr Harrison’s writings hidden away round the lake. I hope he finds them, he went on, hanging up his keys on the front door. But then again, maybe it would be better if he didn’t.

General Hugo Arbuthnot looked angrily at his watch. Five minutes past eleven, and the meeting due to start at eleven o’clock sharp. If there was one thing guaranteed to put the General in a bad mood it was unpunctuality, particularly when the planning of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, now only two months away, was at stake.